


even if it's just a lie; mikasa .a.

by arrowthroughtheheart



Series: song-fics [7]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Attack on Titan Manga spoilers, Canon - Manga, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Character Study, Crossing Timelines, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mikasa Ackerman-centric, Minor Mikasa Ackerman/Armin Arlert, POV Mikasa Ackerman, Protective Mikasa Ackerman, Song fic, Spoilers, attack on titan - Freeform, everything about this is horrible i hate myself, i feel bad typing that, idk - Freeform, is that what its called, mostly - Freeform, no beta we die like men, oh well, ooh, season 4 spoilers????, uh, yay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:34:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25483264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arrowthroughtheheart/pseuds/arrowthroughtheheart
Summary: Mikasa should know how it feels to be detached.She just doesn’t know how to act when the emblem of her hopes and dreams emits the same passion as an immovable rock as he stares into the distance, whatever kind of fucked up responsibility that was passed onto him has drowned the once explosive flare of aspiration.
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman & Armin Arlert & Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman & Sasha Blouse, Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman/Various
Series: song-fics [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1328012
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	even if it's just a lie; mikasa .a.

**Author's Note:**

> fuCK  
> ok so this is inspired by billie eilish's ilomilo which was released either one or two years ago but i listened to it yesterday in the car while simping for mikasa and it just- clicks. okay. so.  
> and i'm literally shaking bc AOT is one of the reasons why i am the way i am ((to reference pls look at all my other sad as fuck stories laced by fifty five thousand deaths)) and me making an AOT fic is sum circle of life energy and i'm about to cry but i am so nervous anyways enjoy-  
> i also dont have an editor and im too scared to edit this so im so sorry-
> 
> this starts @ chapter 108 of the manga and then it alternates everywhere kdnbsdkjfb

_ Told you not to worry _

_ But maybe that's a lie _

It’s almost comical, how worried she is. Especially when, compared to everything they’ve all been through in their early youth - this one fades into an almost insignificant chromatic. Not insignificant, maybe not. Just oddly peaceful according to their standards.  _ Mikasa’s standards. _

Sitting in an open cart dragged across the familiar terrains she’s seen all her life, with a new type of anxiety writhing and moving in the furthest back of her damaged mindset. 

The cart isn’t the smoothest way of travelling, the bumpiness that occurs every now and then a reminder of the fresh train tracks that was made alongside the hours of bloodshed and sacrifices their neverending compromises come with. 

Mikasa isn’t up for it.

She’s never been, judging by how noisy the war inside her head is. Despite going with the flow and submitting to what the majority of her peers’ passion are headed most of the time, she realizes that she’s going to not be able to stay quiet forever. In fact, maybe one of these days she’s going to have to speak up. And better yet before it’s too late.

But how can she know  _ when  _ it’s too late to do anything?

_ Honey, what's your hurry? _

_ Won't you stay inside? _

Eren’s always in a hurry. 

It’s nothing new, not a discovery that someone wrote on an empty piece of notebook just because his shift of personality is so sudden and mind-boggling. He’s just always been the way he is, and that is particularly obvious, nonetheless for Mikasa. 

That’s why the current conversation isn’t overwhelming her at the very least. It really doesn’t, as even her own logical brain drove her countless of sleepless nights toward this time, this moment, this exact second where it felt almost too comical and atmospherically challenging that Eren just spoke up, in a voice more sombre than he’s ever sounded, and stated: “We need to decide soon.”

Mikasa did not look up, did not even move an inch from where she’s sitting, her own fingers intertwined between her tense thighs - and the words that followed made her vibrate with anxiety-filled agony even further. 

“Who’s going to inherit my titan.”

_ Remember not to get too close to stars _

_ They're never gonna give you love like ours _

It took Mikasa less than a split second to answer this non-question with her own typical static voice, seemingly unbothered, collected. It’s different this time, though, since she’s surrounded not only by the people who have been with her for at least  _ four  _ years - and more, if we’re talking about the two she came here with - who knows exactly how to differentiate her almost stoic nature from each other. A few other voices chimed in after her own, but she’s just too detached to care. 

If detached is even the perfect word to describe how she feels.

How she always felt.

Mikasa theorized about herself a lot. How much longer she’s been actually detached from reality and by effects from that, her own emotions. Pretending to be fine when she’s absolutely drowning in anxiety, disbelief, and more morbid curiosity than it was allowed for her as a little girl was alarming enough. Why she never realized the fact that she’s more than simply ‘scared’ will never fail to increase her sky-rocketing self-doubts.

It was easy to ignore, as a kid.

Maybe it was easy because  _ everyone  _ ignores kids, and how they feel. How strongly they feel against things that are seemingly wrong, how strongly they feel about defending what they think is right. 

Strong emotions have led Mikasa’s entire life.

It feels almost horrible to see those strong emotions eating away its host, the young boy she’s been following her entire life, the same exact person that was once fiery and excitable in the most stupid, near-death ways possible. That host is just sitting there now, across from Mikasa in the back of an open cart, shoulders almost slouched downwards in a detached-from-reality motion.

Mikasa should know how it feels to be detached.

She just doesn’t know how to act when the emblem of her hopes and dreams emits the same passion as an immovable rock as he stares into the distance, whatever kind of fucked up responsibility that was passed onto him has drowned the once explosive flare of aspiration. 

_ Where did you go? _

_ I should know, but it's cold _

_ And I don't wanna be lonely _

_ So show me the way home _

Actually, when she thinks about it once again - it doesn’t change. 

Nothing’s ever changed, from the kickstart of Mikasa’s entire new life. Something brought her back into the day her parents were brutally murdered in front of her, yet she stood there, shaking. Just like in this exact moment. Watch as someone she loves gets hacked into pieces, blood splattering everywhere from each and every cut they shove under her family’s skins. 

This is almost the same exact thing.

She was kidnapped back then, a little girl who has something precious enough beyond her control; the genes of a race that is closer to extinction than she’s ever cared about. She never cared about anything but those close to her. As Mikasa has said time and time again, there’s a limit to caring about people she knows - and sooner or later, she finds the limit expanding to the brim. 

When she laid there, though, hopeless and in pain; dried tears forming a sheer second skin underneath her eyes and her head spinning as loud as a tornado - she was saved. 

By none other than a prancing, frantic little boy. She never really got a good look of his face back then; since he just barged into the room, stabbing a grown man right where it hurts. He killed to save, none other than that Eren we talk about a lot, even when he was at least a half size of the human traffickers he killed. 

Mikasa felt cold before this.

As if her bones were frosted in a thin layer of snow, rendering her unable to move. Cold and lonely, and only after she was freed from the three traffickers who killed her parents (she took down one on her own, though maybe Eren did help with the distraction he conveyed) did she realize how terrible of a mixture those two were. Cold and loneliness.

She never wanted to feel any of those things ever again, apparently, and from time to time again she was reminded of it.

Her newfound friends almost died, a lot. They actually die quite a lot, too. Mikasa faced the fact that she’s going to keep losing her chosen family as much as she lost her family once upon a time, back in the days, but there’s just something about needing to protect as much as she can that brings her comfort.

It’s not a good plan, no, not by a mile.

But she’d do it over and over again if that means she’d at least die with the closure of knowing how protected the people who are important to her are.

Which in hindsight sounds selfish, really.

But how was she supposed to change who she really is?

_ I can’t lose another life _

Mikasa really can’t.

Which explained clearly how out of control her automatic reactions were when she saw with her own two eyes how Armin’s entire body was burnt. How totally unrecognizable one of the few flares of light in her life became, fighting for his right to live even when he was hanging on it by a thin thread.

She trusted their Captain, usually.

Levi, that small little seemingly insignificant guy that walks around with a frown on his face to juxtapose how easily he could be overlooked by his peers and younger audiences until you hit a nerve and he swings at you with enough pressure to actually kill a horse.

But Armin was at least one of the many reasons Mikasa decided to not just give up and  _ die. _

And that was solely enough explanation for her to charge against their own Captain, fight against her better judgement, knowing full well how quickly things can go to absolute shit if they let their Commander die. Shifting the power to the next in line for leader is definitely going to be a clusterfuck, and debating how much more important Armin is for their future in comparison to a dying Erwin is more than definitely going to get both her and Eren in some kind of non-beneficial punishment but for that time being?

She didn’t care.

She would have cared even more less when someone stopped her from killing mostly everyone there who disagreed with her, but then she heard what the person behind her said.

Who was it again? She didn’t remember.

But there’s one thing for sure she remembered, and that was how everyone experienced the same loss she did. Everyone lost someone they wanted to protect, someone they wanted to bring back. So it didn’t really matter.

It didn’t matter  _ who  _ she’s desperate to save, since her opinions didn’t matter for the sake of humanity. As it never did. And never will be. 

All she ever wanted was to protect, yet something always reminds her that she’s wrong in her ways.

That was why she stopped squirming against Hange, at the time.

She’s reminded of how wrong her mindset is.

And it hurts more than anything else she’s ever experienced, so she lost most of her strength as she muffled a pathetic whine.

_ Hurry, I'm worried _

Mikasa knows she isn’t the only one who’s worried. She takes this understanding into her heart to be able to get a lot closer to her tiny circle of friends better, but somehow there’s always that little object on her way.

However much worried they are for the same people, their priorities will never align. 

Jean said it himself once, a long time ago, that not everyone is willing to die for Mikasa’s best interests as much as she does. It was referring to a certain person, back then, but after time passes and more experiences are added to their list, Mikasa is still sure that their priorities; whether it be Eren or non-Erens - will never perfectly align.

It’s a totally bizarre world they’re living in.

It’s beautiful for how cruel and odd it is.

_ The world's a little blurry _

_ Or maybe it's my eyes _

Maybe it’s also Mikasa’s shaking hands that are vibrating non-stop without the aid of their bumpy transportation object. The sun is setting, its orange hue washing over the terrains she’s seen when she came by to help the train-track project and a few other times before and since it started, but that’s not the only prominent colour she could witness.

Jean agreed on this, apparently. Either that or the man could read her mind, and if that’s the case Mikasa could stand to be more careful about what she’s thinking.

“Why’re you all  _ red?!  _ What’s going on here?!” Jean asks in his almost shrieking noise he always does when he’s either embarrassed or. . . flabbergasted. Like that one time his mother visited to give him food. Exactly. That kind of voice.

Mikasa takes in the reddened face of her friends, fighting the urge to cover her own reddening face with her significantly sweaty hands. 

She knows exactly why they’re all red without having to shoot the self-protecting questions like Jean did. It’s absolutely on brand for them to be embarrassed about things like this, about being mushy and as open as a book.

It’s probably nothing as grand and groundbreaking as some might expect it to be, especially coming from passive-aggressive Eren himself.

He just said what’s on his mind, and apparently, it was enough to inflict some kind of emotion they’ve never fully explored before, save for how much exploring they have already been doing about the world and how it functions.

“Because you’re important to me,” Eren had said, “so. . . I want you to live long lives.”

_ The friends I've had to bury _

_ They keep me up at night _

There will never be enough time. Casualties, despite how much they need to deal with everyday - will always pop up. Whether it be actual dead bodies, lingering dreads of decisions one has to make, all the ‘what if’s that won’t ever get its own firm answers; there will never be enough time.

Mikasa tosses and turns on her bed more nights than she sleeps, and even when she counts the times where she  _ isn’t  _ tossing and turning in her own bed; she’s either not sleeping on her own bed or was under the influence of alcohol. Those nights don’t happen as often as the nights where she just bears with it. Just for the sake of it. Because she deserves to be up and thinking, not sleeping even a wink for three whole days.

Because she’s here.

She’s alive, and not dead in some random body bag scattered throughout a field for decoy and or tossed into fire with thousands of other unrecognizable bones until they finally burn to ashes. She’s alive, and not crashed by gigantic fingers who are under the influence of a mindless mutated body. She’s alive, and she’s doing the burying. She’s alive, and she’s not the one being buried. 

She deserves the insomnia and the nights where she can’t sleep because she automatically thinks of all the faces of people she was not able to save, their tears, their strained screaming voices, and their pain. She deserves the feeling of wanting to join them sometimes, giving up. But she doesn’t deserve an easy way out.

Or so she always thought.

_ Said I couldn't love someone _

_ 'Cause I might break _

Oh, Mikasa and her detached emotions.

She has more relationship value with how much she  _ isn’t  _ interested in feeling something more than being indebted to her childhood saviour than she actually has any type of relationship outside of her little group of friends she’s grown to somewhat trust. It’s jarring to even think about the word love in a hopeful, romantic setting - and somehow even when she thinks that way for her entire life, Mikasa shocks herself from time to time.

It’s only natural that she feels like she’s fooling herself when she thinks, ‘Maybe I  _ am  _ in love.’

Because what type of example has she seen, in her nineteen years of life, that proves that being in love is okay? She’s seen her parents love each other, and for a while it was okay. For a while,  _ she  _ was okay, and then one wrong knock on their door and they were gone. Gone for good, dead, stabbed in the neck. She’s seen Eren’s parents love each other, right? What good did that do to anyone? All they had was something out of those years of love. . . a child. Their son. Their son who is now going through a lot since he’s the only one who’s alive to take care of the mess his parents were a part of, and now he; as a product of their so-called love, is on his own.

Is that all love  _ is? _ She would think a lot.

If loving someone meant that you’d have to leave a lot of other people all on their own, most of Mikasa’s own logical brain would force herself against it, usually.

But she’s going to be in one hell of a ride when she realizes that she’s been fooling herself this whole time, and day by day, she dreads the day when the realization is going to hit. 

Would she break even more than she already has?   
A broken vase does you no good, for aesthetic purposes. It does you good though, if there’s an unassuming bandit that sneaked into your house and doesn’t think a threat is lurking in the shadows, fists balled up and ready to fight with bits and pieces of the broken vase that no longer serve its purpose. Is that what Mikasa is going to be, if she’s in love?

A weapon?

Will someone exploit her as something so generic that she’ll be forced not to feel?

_ If you're gonna die, not by mistake _

And how would she feel when they’re close enough to death as they are?

Mikasa knows how little the chances of surviving in the world are. She knows, and that’s the sole reason why she repeats from time to time again the mistakes that she sometimes forgets. She doesn’t have to fret over her newfound family’s safety over and over again to realize that they are okay. She needs to learn to trust them.

But what good does trust do?   
Her trust in Sasha’s abilities didn’t save her from dying, even when the latter was only a few feet away from her. Her trust in the outside world didn’t stop one ignorant little girl from shooting a bullet straight through her friend.

Anything good Mikasa has been learning to do doesn’t do anyone else good. It only makes her  _ feel  _ like she’s trying to do better to become an even better person. But what if that’s only another type of selfishness she’s been trying to achieve?

What if her entire life is the epitome of selfishness, and she’s just too late in realizing a few of these points?

_ So, where did you go? _

Mikasa knows how restless Eren is when it comes to saving the world. She would’ve said she’s got the same amount of pressure on her shoulder since she’s got the same drive to do good for the world, but she really doesn’t. She wouldn’t be as restless as he is, going as far as infiltrating the enemy’s city just to do. . . what, exactly?

She isn’t completely in the dark.

No one is completely in the dark, since they were given a proposition, one too good to deny but also a whole miles too complicated to be true. There has to be something behind this, under it, between it. What was the catch?

Mikasa had little to no time to worry about those things, since once she'd set her mind in trying to lend the military a brain cell despite how unreliable she feels when told to process things that are overwhelming for her, her number one priority apparently had fled into an undercover mission all the way across the sea.

Was she mad?   
She didn’t even know. There was always a line between anger and worry when it comes to Eren, but this time, she still has an equally worried and flabbergasted Armin by her side. It was going to be okay.

_ I should know, but it's cold _

_ And I don't wanna be lonely _

It was okay until they needed to come and save him.

The absolute chaos that comes from whatever it is this young man is trying to achieve is absolutely terrifying for Mikasa, since with her own two eyes she sees as children and women died. It was almost as if that day reoccurred, and somehow, Mikasa assured herself that she’s only half-okay with saving Eren from a mess he himself made since he’s someone very important to her. It was fucked up, and she’s sure that it’s a mentality almost as fucked up as their enemies’, but that’s the sole reason why she tried not to dwell with it.

_ So tell me you'll come home _

_ Even if it's just a lie _

She had asked him to come home when it got a little too much. She felt empty, and when she caught his attention she was hoping for something behind those eyes she used to look for so much. But she couldn’t tell anything else apart from the feeling of her own emptiness mirrored in his eyes.

It was a horrible feeling.

It was even more horrible when he took her hand, seemingly resigned to the fate that he was going to have to go home either way - and his hands felt cold. It wasn’t literally cold, since he was burning up as he always is when he erupts from the nape of his gigantic form. But it felt cold. Light, cold, empty. 

It was horrible.

_ I tried not to upset you _

_ Let you rescue me the day I met you _

Mikasa was rescued a lot.

Mostly by the same person, mostly in the same resigned state. When she feels as if she’s just going to die, that it’s the best outcome her current self could ever come to. When she closes her eyes and just listens to the few seconds of silence before searing pain could rush through her entire body.

But that same young man is the one who ignited all the same amount of pain she felt towards everyone else. And yes, she could understand the selfishness of wanting to protect the few things that are important. Only those few little ones, without giving a single care about what could happen to the world.

But what makes her so different from everyone else?

Why was she saved, all those times ago?

Why was Armin saved?

And why does the chances of those recurring once again feel less and less, everytime she sees him?

That wasn’t a question, that last one. Everybody changes. She should know.

_ I just wanted to protect you _

_ But now I'll never get to _

She doesn’t  _ need  _ to. People don’t usually seek protection from the people they hate, don’t they. If Eren told her that he’s hated her his entire life, shouldn’t she trust him? That’s all she does this whole time, isn’t it? Trusting him. 

That’s a lot to take in, this new information that was thrown at her without a second thought. Actually, knowing this young man, there’s a lot of second thoughts put into every single word he says. Maybe even a third thought, a fourth, a fifth, and a whole other dozen of side plans he’s made during his few days of laying off in that particularly cramped basement jail he was put in momentarily.

Armin told her that Eren was definitely lying. Definitely. He couldn’t have been serious, that was what the blonde young man was implying.  _ But when  _ has  _ he ever not been serious, Armin?  _ Mikasa wanted to ask, apparently, but the words died on her tongue before it ever came out, like every other few words of arguments she’s wanted to say this whole time.

It never works.

Going against other people in something not tied deeply with a life and death situation isn’t like Mikasa, and she resigns with a quiet little “Yeah. . .” just to get Armin to lay off from the subject without offending him even further. He did fight for her back then, and there’s a resulting discolouration on his cheeks from where Eren retaliated.

They looked like little boys back then, it almost made Mikasa’s heart ache. Not in a nice way, not in a nostalgic way.

More like the amount of nights she’s spent laying on her bed, eyes opened, thinking about how much unspoken words she’s wanted to say that she never made happen. Thinking about how much regret her life is filled with since she is unable to speak her mind.

It felt like that.

It felt like Armin was trying to make a point.

And he did.

Yet Mikasa herself never did. Didn’t move an inch, didn’t raise her voice to retaliate even when she notices how much her friends have changed and will continue to change. She just observes, accepts everything with open arms. Maybe even when she shouldn’t have.

But that’s just who she is.

And maybe she’d die one day, regretting how she led her life and all the times wasted where she doesn’t say her true feelings. Not out loud, anyway.

She could never.

And maybe she should resign to this one realization, at the very least.

\--

_ Where did you go? _

_ I should know, but it's cold _

_ And I don't wanna be lonely _

_ Was hoping you'd come home _

_ I don't care if it's a lie _

**Author's Note:**

> i would rlly love to hear yalls opinions but pls dont scare me away AHAHAHAHA


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